4 ms·
It already is better than a car. It has a higher throughput and lower cost. If you value luxury, pay more for private transit. This isn’t contrary to a city tha
by drb91 8y ago
It already is better than a car. It has a higher throughput and lower cost. If you value luxury, pay more for private transit. This isn’t contrary to a city that invests in public transit. SF is practically undrivable during the week rush hour because people prioritize comfort over economy. So the only knob a city has is to increase expense of driving, or to make public transit more comfortable. I don’t see any humanitarian route to the latter, so I am emphatically for the former.
- epicureanideal 8y agoHigh throughput and low cost are not the only metrics that commuters care about, clearly, or else they'd be riding public transit. If you offer to PAY ME a dollar to ride on BART next to a smelly, loud homeless person for an hour, versus me PAYING $10 in gas to drive to work, I'll pick the latter without hesitation.
- drb91 8y agoWell, that’s the rational consumer side of you. What about the side of you that’s a member of a community—how do you start caring about externalities?
- epicureanideal 8y agoTheoretically that's what our elected officials should be dealing with. I've tried to intervene with loud or aggressive passengers before and I'll end up being the only person in 40 people on a BART car to do so, and after a couple experiences where I saw that nobody was going to back me up, I decided I should not risk my life over such things. I'd rather drive my car to work and make sure I get home to my children.
- woolvalley 8y agoI agree, if elected officials want to reduce traffic, they would put barrier separated bike lanes and keep the trains clean and safe. But the bay area local governments are self-sabotaging parody where it's difficult for anything like that to get done.